God Suspected My Heart Was a Geode but He Had to Make Sure by Layla Benitez-James is the winner of the third annual Toi Derricotte + Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize.

Created through a partnership between Cave Canem, The Writer's Room at
the Betsy Hotel, and O, Miami Poetry Festival, the prize honors one outstanding chapbook manuscript per year by a Black poet, regardless of the poet’s publication history or career status.

The manuscript was selected by Major Jackson.

Layla Benitez-James is an artist and translator living in Alicante, Spain and serves as the Director of Literary Outreach for the Unamuno Author Series in Madrid. Her poems and translations have appeared in The Acentos Review, Anomaly, Guernica, Waxwing and elsewhere. Her audio essays about translation can be found at Asymptote Journal Podcast.

Publication of this chapbook was made possible through support from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Miami-Dade County, and Schmidt Family Foundation.